The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of Americaby Robert Reich – A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward. We are going to battle once again. Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together…Regressives take the opposite positions…today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards…Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward….

Want to end partisan politics? Here’s what won’t work — and what will. By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Washington Post, May 17, 2012 -… Washington is broken, that our political system can’t grapple with the nation’s big, long-term problems. So what can be done about it? … #4 Expanding the electorate…In the United States, such near-universal voting could eliminate the parties’ incentive to diminish the turnout of their opponents’ supporters and to mobilize the ideological extremes. Boosting overall turnout would help tilt the balance back toward where most Americans actually are: closer to the middle.

Politics is the great divider in United States by Dan Balz, Washington Post, June 4, 2012 … the most significant divisions are no longer based on race, class or sex but on political identity… the average partisan gap has nearly doubled over this 25-year period — from 10 percent in 1987 to 18 percent in the new study…the changes began to accelerate during George W. Bush’s presidency. Barack Obama’s presidency, the report says, has received “the most extreme partisan reaction to government in the past 25 years. Republicans are far more negative toward government than at any previous point, while Democrats feel far more positive.”…Some of the most significant differences — and the areas where the divisions have increased the most — were on core issues of the 2012 campaign: the role and scope of government and the social safety net.

Why We Love Politics By David Brooks,New York Times, November 22, 2012b…We live in an anti-political moment, when many people — young people especially — think politics is a low, nasty, corrupt and usually fruitless business…“Lincoln,” directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner… portrays the nobility of politics in exactly the right way. It shows that you can do more good in politics than in any other sphere…The challenge of politics lies precisely in the marriage of high vision and low cunning…Politics is noble because it involves personal compromise for the public good.…

Libertarians in 2013: The Even Whiter, Wealthier, WASPier Bastion of Republican PartyBySteven Rosenfeld, AlterNet, October 29, 2013 …Libertarians make up a small but enduring slice of the Right.. libertarians line up with Republicans most of the time. They are the economic conservatives and privacy rights adherents that existed before the Tea Party emerged in 2010…they split with the religious right on regulating morality, and they are not always Tea Party fans.… “committed libertarians”—who comprise seven percent of all voters, with another 15 percent leaning their way—have an out-sized influence. Libertarians feel that there is almost nothing good that government can do for them personally or for society, PRRI reports. In contrast, the GOP’s evangelical wing wants government to ban abortion, reject same-sex marriage and bar assisted suicide for the terminally ill.… a room full of libertarians would be overwhemingly young, male and white…or religious agnostics (27 percent). It would one thing to dismiss libertarians as a fringe movement, as “only 12 percent of self-identified Republicans are libertarians, compared to 20 percent of Republicans who identify with the Tea Party, [or] 33 percent who identify with the religious right.” But with benefactors such as the Koch brothers channeling [6] more than $250 million into the 2012 election for campaigns targeting Democrats and unions—and continuing today by leading attacks on Obamacare and trying to discredit [6] climate change—it is important to know what they believe and how they differ from others on the Right. On economic issues and social safety nets, PRRI reports they are old-school economic conservatives…Economic and religious conservatives have always occupied conflicting corners of the GOP—and that continues, as libertarians disagree with the religious right on culture war issues…libertarians dislike Democrats more fervently than they like Republicans… When it comes to Democrats, 89 percent “have an unfavorable view” and 64 percent “have a very unfavorable opinion of the party.” Libertarians name Sen. Rand Paul as their first choice for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nominee, with Tea Party darlings Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan following in descending order. Libertarians tend to register to vote at a slightly higher rate (80 percent) than the national average (76 percent) “Libertarians are much more likely than Americans overall to pay attention to what is going on in government and politics,” it said. “Fewer than four-in-ten (38 percent) Americans report paying attention… Among libertarians, a majority (56 percent) report that they pay attention to politics always or most of the time.” Americans who identify as firm libertarians might only be seven percent of the electorate, but with some of the deepest pockets in America backing their beliefs—particularly on economic issues and the role of government—they remain an outsized political force. They certainly are an enduring part of the Republican Party, even if they have been eclipsed by Tea Partiers—such as during the recent government shutdown.